Currently Stopped at Submas Brainrot Station

They wear suits, but they don't even know basic etiquette.

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

I'm not sure if I ever shared this story before here, but in Curacao, when I was allowed to assist in a guest interaction programme, there was suddenly consternation in the pool behind us. A guest had entered the water and the dolphins were going crazy, paying no heed to the trainers anymore. The lead trainer that was with me gave the dolphins to me to watch over while she went to help. When she came back she told me what had happened. The guest that had caused so much uproar had left the water again and was asked if he had done anything to upset the dolphins. He hadn't, and he couldn't imagine what was wrong... until he mentioned he had a pacemaker. The younger dolphins in the pool had never seen someone with a pacemaker before and apparently it rocked their world.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Breeding livestock animals and selectively culling to improve stock or end suffering is completely different than practicing eugenics on humans, yes.

I don't know enough about human baby medical conditions to say if failure to thrive is caused by the same things as in quail, but it seems likely that there's at least some overlap.

With humans, we have advanced medical care to work to fix some problems (like organ transplants for organ failures) and the ability to reduce or eliminate suffering (like pain medication), as well as (eventually) the ability to explain the situation to the person experiencing it. None of these things are available to a 1 week old quail. Hard culling it IS the kindest treatment available, on top of being the most practical consideration for the improvement of the flock.

People having human babies are not doing so in an attempt to improve the stock of the human race, they're doing it to make a family. This is not the goal of raising livestock. Most livestock is being raised for food (or use, like riding horses or shearing sheep etc), and most humans don't participate in cannibalism, nor do most people feed their dead to animals. The cultures that do participate in these things still aren't raising humans specifically for this purpose.

Lastly, humans DO sometimes make the call to end a life before nature would, though we don't think of this as culling. Abortions do happen where something has gone very wrong with the fetus to where it won't survive, and a choice must be made, particularly in instances where the mother's life is in danger. Even a healthy fetus could endanger a mother's life and a worse choice must be made. Abortions happen for many other reasons, too, by the choice of the mother (or in situations where she may be unable to make the call, the other parent, a relative, or a doctor). We also have (in some places) protocols for allowing patients to end their own lives in hospital settings if they choose- DNRs are a thing, but we also have euthanasia cocktails that terminal patients can choose in order to take control of their own suffering and end. But these are almost always welfare considerations made for (and by) the people they concern (the mother, the patient) rather than a measure of selective breeding.

The missing piece is just like that Terry Pratchett quote, " It starts with treating people like things". People are not livestock. I mean, obviously. But then that leads to the question of "why do we do this to animals then?"

As a city-slicker who hasn't had a huge amount to do with livestock, I really appreciate you speaking on the thought process that goes on as a breeder and carer.

The thing I didn't mention, and something that people rarely consider from this perspective, is that nature culls. In the wild, FTT animals will suffer and die slowly. They might be lucky enough to be caught by a predator and ended violently but swiftly. Animals not suited for their environment will suffer and die off at some point. Sick animals will suffer until their body gives out and they die. Injured animals will suffer, often rotting on their feet, before succumbing to the injury. If they make it, they may recover fully or they may be lame in a way that causes them to suffer hunger or pain for the rest of their lives with no way to abate it. It will probably mean their (slow, painful) death at some point. Predators may assist with swifter but violent ends. Even healthy animals may die to accidents, predators, etc. Survival of the fittest and all that. This is natural, sure, but also horrific. The two are not mutually exclusive. And it's necessary, for this balance to exist, or animals would overwhelm their environments and none of them would get to live.

In an artificial environment (ie, domestically-kept animals), humans are acting as nature, and I feel it cannot be stated enough that we are far far far FAR kinder about it all than nature will ever be. Well-kept domestic animals experience a life of luxury that their wild ancestors could never hope to have dreamed of. They get rich foods, endless clean water, a safe place to live and sleep, health care as needed, and a swift, gentle end. Their progeny will produce progeny which will produce progeny which will produce progeny, into time everlasting as far as they're concerned. For creatures whose goal in life is to pass on their genes, that's a pretty damn successful life

But the other side of that is that the domestic animals (as a whole) ARE wildly more successful at reproducing, and those offspring are wildly more successful at surviving, which means there are far more of them than would exist in nature. Humans must act as nature in this case; and this means that responsible keeping involves pruning the animals not suited for the environment they are in (in order to make animals that do not suffer in this environment), gently putting to rest the animals that are suffering (particularly in ways that cannot be healed), and, yes, pruning the excess to feed ourselves, in return.

But the logic breaks down because what makes a human better is impossible to define. A better livestock animal is bred for a small handful of characteristics: more efficient conversion of feed to meat, larger frame, docile temperament, etc. (And most of those are compromises at best.) A better human??? You can breed for height or coloring or muscle mass/body composition. You can even ostensibly breed for temperament but human temperaments are much harder to anticipate. You can't breed for intelligence, for compassion, for moral certitude, for ability to endure stress. None of the things that make humans human are purely heritable traits.